Surfers Paradise. Queensland. June 2012
Australia. It looms large in the lives of most Kiwis. Everybody in NZ knows someone living there. There's hardly a person in the whole country that doesn't have some family member who lives in OZ. My own sister is in Melbourne. Not surprising then that Kiwis go to Australia a lot. It's easy...a 3 -4 hour flight, cheap airfares, cheap accommodation when you crash with the relatives and all that great weather and sunshine. And then there's the fact that we can stay there permanently if we want to, something that around half a million New Zealanders have chosen to do. For sure the mining boom in Australia has lead to many great opportunities for Kiwis and there are plenty of stories floating around about six figure salaries and great lifestyle opportunities. But....I've never really got the whole "lets move to Australia thing". I've visited a number of times but never really understood what the draw was for so many Kiwis. The last time I was in Australia was 2003 and I left with the same impression that I had always had...nice to visit but I wouldn't want to live there. This year was different however. Maybe it was something to do with the fact that I was accompanied by a Kiwi who now lives in Brisbane and another one who wishes he did. Possibly it was the 20 degree midwinter sunshine that did it. Either way when I flew back to Auckland at the end of the week I found that my position on Australia has changed somewhat...
It's not financial. It seems to me that when you boil things down there's not really a lot of difference between average Kiwi Joe and average Aussie Joe when it comes to money. If you are a super specialised highly skilled geo-tech consultant in the mining business or something like that you will definitely be ahead but if you are a taxi driver in Sydney it's not so much different. Some things are cheaper but some things are dearer. Housing in the big cities is just as ludicrously expensive as in NZ and my trip to the supermarket in Surfers paradise seemed to cost me just as much as it would have at home. It's not political. Australian politics and system of government is even more perverted and absurd than our own one in NZ. It's not commercial. Setting up a similar business to mine in Australia is an exercise in jumping through hoops and dealing with enormous amounts of ridiculous bureaucracy and pointless red tape. In fact, for me, the most compelling reason to move to Queensland is that they seem to have maintained its social standards and cultural identity while New Zealand has gone so far backwards
The gold coast is not doing so well financially these days but the
overall impression I got from talking to the inhabitants is positive and
optimistic. Standards are being upheld and most of the people I saw in
Queensland still seem to have some pride in their country, city, culture
and even their personal appearance. The people
there are mainly European Australians and Asians the vast majority of
whom were well dressed and moved around with a real sense of purpose. By contrast, a trip around Auckland seeing the large amounts of
badly dressed mongrel deadbeats sloping around without any visible purpose leaves me with the
feeling that we have lost our culture, civic and national pride. Downtown Brisbane is clean and tidy
with great infrastructure and a real go ahead atmosphere. By contrast, in NZ the merely proposing to do anything constructive
unleashes a tsunami of dissent, dispute, protest and acrimony. In the
beach side village of Piha the community was split over the issue of a
tree branch which had grown over a footpath. One side wanted the tree
pruned as it has become a safety issue. The other side argued that the
tree had been there for years and that the road should be altered. The
tree huggers were the most vociferous of course and forced the local
council to spend tens of thousands of dollars on feasibility studies and
proposals to re-route the road and build a new footpath in a manner
that was environmentally sound and culturally sensitive. This farce
dragged on for months until one night an anonymous person, in a
stunning display of common sense, simply cut the branch off with a saw.
End of problem. Somehow I just cant see that nonsense happening in
Queensland. It certainly wouldn't happen in Tokyo or Shanghai.
The other thing I like about Queensland is that it expects it's
immigrants to assimilate and integrate more than we do. Everybody we encountered in the Gold coast and in Brisbane spoke good English no matter what their job was or what country they had come from. In Auckland there are now large sections of the community that are unable to communicate in English. Going to a supermarket or bank in South or West Auckland is like a visit to the UN headquarters. Here it has been decreed that it is unreasonable to expect an immigrant to learn our language and that it is us who must make the effort. The same thing goes for fair and reasonable behaviour. I recently had a customer who had immigrated to NZ from India and in the time honoured tradition, as soon as he had obtained NZ citizenship, he promptly departed for Australia. This abuse of NZ as a gateway to Australia is common among third world immigrants. This particular Indian found life in Brisbane a bit harder than he had imagined and so after one year returned to NZ. When I asked if he did not like Australia he replied that "Australia didn't like me". It didn't take me long to find out that I don't care for him much myself. When dealing with him I found him to be underhanded and untrustworthy. While he may find it easier to get away with that approach here by claiming cultural differences, Australians tend to be less afraid to enforce first world standards on third world people. In that respect, Japan is similar....if you plan on living there you will have to fit in and don't expect the locals to bend over back wards to accommodate your culture or traditions. NZ has imported
tens of thousands of third world people over the last 20 years and has
done bugger all to ensure that they fit in with the existing culture and
traditions. On the contrary, we have been browbeaten by successive
governments and special interest groups into accepting without question
their cultures and traditions no matter how incompatible they are with our own.
I am not under any illusion that all of Australia is the same. Sydney, as far as I can see is not much different to Auckland and has all the same problems and ills caused by all the same stupid policies and attitudes. And the same crappy winter weather. I wouldn't contemplate moving there for a minute, but as for Brisbane...I think I'm starting to get it.
